The prosecutor in the Cleveland kidnappings case has revealed that he may seek aggravated murder charges against the alleged captor, Ariel Castro, because Castro is accused of repeatedly beating and starving one of the women in order to force several miscarriages. This particular detail has caused quite the stir because it casts a fetus in the role of a murder victim, which makes many pro-choice advocates profoundly uncomfortable. I think it's for the same reasons that expressing opposition to sex-selective abortion raises such anxiety here in Canada: It forces people to focus on the fetus rather than the mother.

So what if Harper muzzled an MP for suggesting a motion to condemn sex-selective abortion? It's not as though it's a matter of national import, and denouncing the motion, as MP Mark Warawa would have it, would have had no practical implications in and of itself. The only value of his motion would have been to reintroduce the word "abortion" into the national conversation, and that's something Liberals and NDPers, I imagine, don't want. They should stop posturing and get behind the Prime Minister -- he's the best friend liberals have right now.

There is no justification for aborting a fetus because one simply doesn't like its sex. Unfortunately, however, those who often elect to have abortions based on the sex of the fetus do not do so out of whimsy; rather, their decision is based upon cultural backwardness. These types of abortions do nothing to strengthen cultures. They weaken them, and allow them to continue to operate in a barbarically chauvinistic mindset that might have had its time in the Middle Ages, but today, is absolutely repugnant; especially in Canada.

There is a family-building circumstance that some people find themselves in, that seems to only provoke condemnation from others. I am talking about when a parent or couple is unable to conceive a child of a particular gender which they desire.

It has been estimated that since the 1970s approximately 163 million girls have not been born due to sex selective abortions. In other words, couples waited until an ultrasound could determine the sex of the fetus and aborted because the fetus was female, resulting in 163 million girls not being born over the last 30 years.